July/August 2015 Safety around mobile
equipment requires attention to what’s inside the cab—a properly trained
operator, wearing a seat belt, free of distractions—and what’s outside, such as
blind spots, hazards, and proper maintenance.
By Tony Smith
Mobile
equipment is essential for handling and transporting scrap in virtually all
scrap recycling operations. There’s no living without forklifts, skid-steers,
wheel loaders, material handlers, cranes, rail-car movers, and yard trucks, but
the risks they pose to life and limb should make them a safety priority for all
recyclers. These heavy machines can fatally injure people and ruin property.
Struck-by accidents involving mobile equipment are all too common in the
recycling industry. Anyone who operates or works around this equipment must
understand fully how to act with and react to it. Safe operations start “inside
the box” of the equipment cab, with a properly trained equipment operator who
is wearing a seat belt and is free from distractions such as cellphones.
Attention to safety must continue “outside the box,” however, by training about
blind spots, hazards, equipment care and maintenance, and more.
A Foundation of
Training
Thorough
operator education and training is the first step toward maximizing mobile
equipment safety in your operations. Some states and municipalities require
such training and certification of crane operators; others have adopted
certification requirements for lift equipment operators. In November 2013, for
example, Massachusetts began requiring the licensing of any operator who runs
equipment that lifts loads weighing more than 500 pounds higher than 10 feet.
Some pieces of mobile equipment have their own
training standards you can use to get your operators up to snuff. The National
Commission for the Certification of Crane Operators (Fairfax, Va.), for
instance, offers training and certification for crane operators. The
Occupational Safety and Health Administration (Washington, D.C.) has a federal
standard—29 CFR 1910.178—that covers operation (including operator training) of
powered industrial trucks, commonly called forklifts or lift trucks. The OSHA
standard requires companies to provide classroom-style lecture training,
written testing, and hands-on practical demonstrations for all forklift
operators. Training topics the standard requires include understanding the
stability of the equipment, safe load-handling techniques, and site-specific
lessons based on how you use the equipment at your work site. You can build
your own training program or hire a third party to help you meet the
requirements. Because the requirements are performance-oriented, you also can
tailor a training program to the characteristics of your workplace and to the
particular types of lift trucks you operate.
Even though I’m not a fan of more regulations
in the workplace, the legal requirement to train your forklift operators makes
sense to me based on the number of accidents, near misses, fatalities, and
citations in our industry. The problem has become serious enough to prompt OSHA
to conduct inspections focused on mobile equipment operator training. In fact,
lack of forklift operator training is the No. 1 reason for OSHA citations in
the scrap industry over the past two years.
OSHA also is targeting its efforts in specific
geographic areas through local and regional emphasis programs that focus more
broadly on powered industrial vehicles, not just powered industrial trucks.
That includes all vehicles 29 CFR 1910.178 covers (forklifts) as well as
skid-steer loaders and earth-moving equipment that has been modified to accept
forks. If you use fork attachments on your skid-steers and front-end loaders,
you must train and evaluate the equipment operator through your powered
industrial truck operator training program.
The lessons OSHA’s powered industrial truck
training requires can and should carry over to the other types of mobile
equipment in your plant. If you use skid-steers, wheel loaders, material
handlers, and the like, why not create an in-house operator training program
for this equipment or include these operators in the powered industrial truck
operator safety training class? Oftentimes those operators can offer a
different point of view based on what they know and see in the field.
I know what some of you are thinking: “Who has
the time and money for all of this training?” My reply is simply this:
Educating and training your employees to do their jobs safely ultimately will
be better for your business. You’ll experience less equipment downtime, fewer
property damage incidents, and fewer on-the-job injuries. Yes, training does
take time, and time is money, but the return on investment is there in the form
of increased motivation, better equipment care, safer operations, and a smarter
workforce.
Thorough operator training is a great
foundation for mobile equipment safety in your operations, but reinforce and
enhance that foundation by focusing on these priority areas.
Seat belts. First and foremost,
you must drive home the importance of wearing a seat belt when operating every
type of mobile equipment. As it is in passenger vehicles, the seat belt in
mobile equipment is designed to save lives, so your operators should use
it—every time, without fail. In some types of mobile equipment—such as
forklifts—the seat belt can be the difference between life and death. If a
forklift operator does not wear a seat belt, and the machine tips over or falls
off a loading dock, the operator often will be thrown from the seat during the
fall and get crushed by the equipment, which can weigh 10,000 pounds. Such
accidents—many of which end in fatalities—could be prevented if the operator
simply wore a seat belt. Your operators might complain that the seat belt is
inconvenient, uncomfortable, or limiting, but there really is no excuse for not
wearing it.
No-go zones. Blind spots—which I
call no-go zones—are a major safety priority area when operating mobile
equipment. In my years in the field, I’ve found that individuals who operate
mobile equipment on a regular basis generally have a good understanding of the
blind spots of their particular machine. Also, rear-view cameras on many pieces
of mobile equipment give operators a clear view of their no-go zones, enhancing
safe operations immensely. The principal problem, however, is that individuals
who do not operate mobile equipment regularly fail to understand the hazards of
these no-go zones. These people—who could be other employees, customers,
vendors, or visitors—represent significant safety risks to mobile equipment
operators, who have told me time and time again about near misses due to
individuals entering their no-go zones. The equipment operators might do
everything right—including checking their blind spots before operating the
machine—but their job is to focus on what’s in front of them when they’re doing
production work. If they happen to see someone approach them during operations,
or if someone on the ground communicates with them via radio, then there’s no
problem. In real-world recycling operations, however, it’s common for people on
the ground—knowingly or unknowingly—to wander into the blind spot of mobile
equipment that can weigh anywhere from 5,000 to more than 150,000 pounds.
Oftentimes they assume the operator can see them or somehow knows they are
there. The results can be fatal.
Even when the operator spots the person and
averts a tragedy, he or she often lets the person pass to safety then resumes
operations without chastising the offender. Why? Operators have told me they
don’t feel comfortable confronting the offenders, despite the potential tragedy
their actions could have caused. I encourage operators to speak up and use such
incidents as “learning moments” to teach the offenders about the blind spots
around their equipment and the very real risks of entering them.
Toward that end, when I’m teaching mobile
equipment safety at a recycling operation, I literally put the ground
personnel—anyone who works around mobile equipment on a daily basis—into the
operator’s seat and ask them to look in the mirrors. It is my goal to get as
many people as possible into the seat of the various pieces of equipment. I
don’t let them start or move the equipment, mind you; the goal is to give them
a firsthand view of what the operator can and cannot see. As part of this
exercise, I’ll put two or three people behind the equipment and have them start
walking backward; then I’ll ask the person in the operator’s seat to tell me
when the people emerge from the equipment’s blind spots. This exercise is an eye-opener
for the ground personnel; I have seen “a-ha” moments on some of their faces.
Invariably they are shocked by the size of the equipment’s no-go zones. This is
a simple step you can easily incorporate into mobile equipment safety and
training programs at your facility.
Effective communication between mobile
equipment operators and individuals on the ground is another way to prevent
accidents. Radios are great tools for connecting operators with ground
personnel, but you also can use the lower-tech but equally effective approach
of hand signals. Those signals—used primarily by personnel on the
ground—concisely communicate a range of instructions to the equipment operator,
including stop, travel, raise or lower the load, extend or retract the boom, and
move slowly. The challenge is to make sure everyone who uses or sees such hand
signals truly understands what they mean.
Hazard recognition. Much safety behavior
in recycling operations comes down to the ability to recognize potential
hazards and then respond accordingly—and that definitely is true regarding
mobile equipment safety. Operators of these machines must focus on what I call
the four P’s: people, power lines, potholes, and piles. By people, I mean those
who typically wander into the operator’s working radius or blind spots. As
noted above, those individuals need to learn how to act and react around the
mobile equipment, and operators can play a key role in teaching them proper,
safe behavior.
Power lines create overhead hazards, which can
be easy to overlook—or should I say underlook?—because we humans typically
notice things from our eye level down. That’s how we walk through life. Mobile
equipment operators, however, must keep in mind that their equipment can reach
10, 20, even 50 feet or more and easily touch power lines, posing electrocution
risks and resulting in property damage. Operators also must be aware of lateral
hazards such as buildings, other equipment, and piles of material.
The ground itself—especially uneven ground and
potholes—also can present potential hazards and cause mobile equipment to tip
over. That’s why it’s important to do a site survey to identify ground hazards
and seek the most level surface for operating your equipment.
The
final P stands for scrap piles, which can create blind spots and—as noted
above—pose lateral hazards. Mobile equipment operators must be able to assess
all of the potential hazards in their operating area.
Equipment care. In my book, a good
mobile equipment operator does more than just move the controls. An operator
knows the condition of his or her equipment and the operating surroundings. A
pre-operational inspection and equipment care are critical. Before climbing
into the operator’s seat, do a 360-degree walk-around inspection of the machine—what
I call a “circle of safety” check—to make sure everything is in proper working
order. By doing these inspections, you’re showing that you know the equipment
and care for it—and that safe operation is your priority. It also is important
to do a basic 360-degree visual check whenever you return from a break. This
will give you the peace of mind that no people, scrap, yard trucks, or other
hazards are in your way when you resume operating the equipment.
Equipment care goes hand in hand with general
housekeeping. The better your housekeeping, the easier it is to inspect and
take care of your equipment. Earlier in my career, I had a mentor who taught me
this mantra about housekeeping: We clean to inspect; we inspect to detect; we
detect to correct; we correct to perfect. We’re all striving for perfection—we
want to be as good and as safe as possible—and heeding this advice can bring
you closer to that goal.
In addition to the above points, mobile
equipment safety includes making sure operators enter and exit the equipment
using three points of contact to prevent slip and fall accidents. Also, your
company must have a clear policy on workers’ use of cellphones when operating
mobile equipment. Inattention and distracted operation can translate quickly
into injuries and property damage. Some companies require their operators to
leave their cellphones in the locker room, while others allow the use of
cellphones only when the equipment is idle. Given the vast potential for
problems, it’s probably better to err on the side of caution and make cellphone
use extremely limited.
Tony Smith is a safety
outreach director for ISRI.
Mobile Equipment Safety
Resources
The
ISRI safety website has detailed information on no-go zones for many pieces of
mobile equipment at www.isri.org/docs/default-source/safety/no-zone.pdf?sfvrsn=2.
ISRI also offers several safety outreach services, including a material handler
operator safety train-the-trainer course that includes equipment care and
inspection, safety in the field and on the equipment, load handling and
stability of material handlers, and hands-on field exercises. To learn more
about this training program, go to www.isrisafety.org and click on Safety
Training, then 2-Day Material Handler Train the Trainer. For more information on
ISRI’s safety resources, contact Lisa Hazell at 202/662-8511 or
lisahazell@isri.org.